Three Words
by Beechwood0708
Summary: Richmond knew what Denholm thought of him before anyone else realised. Richmond/Denholm.


There will be some bigger things on the way, I promise. With proper plots and everything. Having minor block, but I'll sort it out :-)

So for now, I thought you might like a bit of angsty Richmondness. Enjoy. Richmond will love you if you do. And you want him to be happy, don't you?

Disclaimer: Property of Graham Linehan.

Three Words

Denholm didn't change, just like that, on the day of his father's funeral. Richmond was fully aware of this, though he never said it. The last scraps of respect he ever had for Denholm prevented him from making it public that he was aware the change had been gradual. To be fair, he had only realised with hindsight, but this happened before the funeral.

Love didn't come easily to either of them. Denholm couldn't give it. Richmond was miserably conscious of this. He had a wife, and she loved him, but he didn't love her back. She didn't know, of course. He had a mistress. She was devoted to him in the extreme, but he didn't love her either. And he had Richmond.

Richmond couldn't find love. Not from Denholm. Denholm probably had him on a level with his mistress. No; not on a level. Lower. Because the mistress was the subject of many a boastful office anecdote, while Richmond was always a dirty little secret. He couldn't get it from anyone else, either. He had used to have people after him. He had been with Lisa, one of the managing directors, for almost four months a while back, but he had the feeling she had used him as a status symbol. Either way, when he had come out, as it were, really revealed himself; who he was, how he felt, she had dropped him like a live bomb. Rachel the accountant, and Fiona from human resources had also been quite into him at one point, as had Lewis, the gay lawyer. But they had all wanted him for the way he looked, the influence he possessed, his status. His popularity. Now he hadn't seen Rachel or Fiona for ages, and Lewis could no longer look at him without recoiling, and took great pride in flaunting David, some kind of middle manager who had joined the company a few months before, and who smiled like he pumped himself full of Prozac before he came to work every morning. In several ways, he reminded Richmond of how he used to be.

But he didn't care about them. He cared about Denholm. He adored him. Wanted to be his more than anything in the world. Once upon a time he fantasised with definite conviction of this happening. Back when he had other admirers, and when people smiled back at him. He had actually thought it might be possible. Not even might; definitely. He laughed at the thought now. Even if Denholm wasn't a screaming homophobe, he would never love Richmond now. He would never say those three words that Richmond longed for every night when he gasped loving obscenities into the humid vacuum of the air.

Denholm saw prostitutes. Hundreds of them. Female mainly, so he could brag about them to the boardroom the next day. He made a show of it. He wined and dined them when his wife was away, and when she wasn't he got them expensive gifts and made them wear them. But he didn't get any satisfaction. That was why there were a few low-class rent boys, taken in old cars parked in alleys where no once could see, that Richmond and perhaps no one else knew about. Even then the ego prevailed. Denholm was forceful, bending boys over and beating them into submission before he buggered them shitless like toys.

Only Richmond was allowed to properly satisfy him. This at least gave Richmond some sense of value at least, a thought that he was needed by this great man in at least some way. It was why, when he was liked, he had thought perhaps Denholm might discard all of his crushing, sadistic principles for Richmond.

Denholm liked to be spoiled. To have it his way, right there right then, and give nothing back in return. That was why he had Richmond there; to lick him and grope him and touch him and stroke him. To suck him and fuck him on demand. And he did, and what was more, he poured all his heart and soul into it. He pumped and pumped around Denholm's lean body, twisting himself to whatever tantalising position Denholm had in mind. He touched him in all the right places, as softly and deliberate or as hard and pushing as Denholm wanted. He made him come. He made him come and scream like a virgin.

He did everything that Denholm wanted, but that Denholm himself had decided that it was not fitting or appropriate to want.

And it was one of those nights, as he fell back, spent, with the hot and panting Denholm splayed out on the soiled sheets next to him, flushed skin showing beneath streaks of black and white makeup, that he realised how Denholm really felt about him. It was long before the funeral that Richmond heard the three words that were to change his life forever.

"You disgust me."


End file.
